


Learning Curve

by FrameofMind



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrameofMind/pseuds/FrameofMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jin didn’t really know what gay was when he met Kazuya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Curve

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Learning Curve  
> Author: FrameofMind  
> Rating: R  
> Word Count: ~1,500  
> Genre: Drama/Romance  
> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.  
> Summary: Jin didn’t really know what gay was when he met Kazuya.  
> Author’s Note: I followed a train of thought, and this is where it led me. Vaguely inspired by Stephen Fry’s first autobiography, _Moab Is My Washpot_. (Um…very vaguely, I should stress…)

Jin didn’t really know what gay was when he met Kazuya.  
  
He knew it was bad. He knew it was something you didn’t want to be. It could ruin your career before it even started. It made you weak and cowardly and strange. It was gross. It was pathetic. Gay meant you would never have any friends and you’d grow up and everyone would hate you and call you names and laugh behind your back as you walked by and give you pitying looks, but not really pity you. Gay meant you were broken.  
  
Jin didn’t ever want to be gay.  
  
But he still didn’t know what it was.  
  
It wasn’t sex. It wasn’t handjobs in the locker rooms or noticing guys’ asses in the shower. It wasn’t seeing each other’s dicks in the bath and maybe even getting hard sometimes, which was funny, but it wasn’t gay. It wasn’t trading blowjobs after class and swigging beer from the machine on the corner with warm cheeks and a satisfied feeling low in your gut. It wasn’t wearing makeup or spending hours in front of the mirror doing your hair or dancing around a stage in sequins and feather boas, and it wasn’t tangling tongues and fumbling hands in the dressing room after the others had gone home. Those were just life. No girls allowed. A hand is a hand, a mouth is a mouth. So what if there’s soft cheekbones and eyeliner and a dick that isn’t yours. It’s just what you need. Everybody does it. As long as you’re not gay, it’s fine.  
  
He wanted Kazuya the first time he saw him. No one else would have picked him out of that lineup, but Jin did. He didn’t even know what for then, because he was fourteen and his own hand was the only one he knew, and anyway he was two whole years older and Kazuya was practically a child and Jin still didn’t know how it worked. He jacked off to the magazine hidden under his mattress and he didn’t even imagine hands or mouths or swigging beer, until one day he saw a pair of them hidden in the subbasement making noises he didn’t know other people ever made. He asked later. Ryo told him the rules.  
  
He watched Kazuya sometimes, even before he knew the rules. In the studio when they were drilling routines, and Kazuya had a huge scrape on his forearm from an ill-judged slide into second base. He was late sometimes, out of breath. He’d smile at Jin when he caught his eye, hold up the latest injured limb like a trophy, and Jin would feel that glow that definitely wasn’t gay, because gay was bad.  
  
After a while the magazine stayed under his bed and it was Kazuya behind his eyelids, because that was okay. That wasn’t against the rules. Kazuya’s mouth in his mind wasn’t against the rules. Sometimes opening for him, sometimes just smiling with a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Pretty. No makeup. He didn’t wear makeup then.  
  
The first time Kazuya touches him is up on the roof, tucked away in that alcove between the door to the stairwell and that little cement bunker that nobody knows what it’s for so they all just call it the safehouse. There’s a signal, nobody bothers anybody. Kazuya is fourteen and Jin is sixteen and Kazuya’s hand is down his pants and it’s nothing at all like his hand and his magazine, or even the Kazuya in his mind. He’s tiny, all limbs and sharp angles and strong for his size, and Jin gets weaker the harder he strokes, and Kazuya’s tongue is in his mouth, and it isn’t gay, not for a second, not even when he comes in Kazuya’s palm, because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. No girls allowed. A pretty boy is just the next best thing. And Jin’s hand next, and soon Kazuya is gasping and no one can hear him but Jin.  
  
It’s stairwells and alcoves and subbasements from there, and Jin holds Kazuya against his chest and tastes the heat in his mouth, tastes Kazuya’s dick because that’s not against the rules either, and it’s not gay. Kazuya opens for Jin in his bedroom when his parents are away, and the magazine’s been thrown out ages ago, the pages stuck together, no longer needed because this is better.  
  
Kazuya’s cheekbones get sharper, and so do his eyebrows, and Jin sees it now, sees the others looking at him. Picking him out of the crowd. Jin saw him first, and they can’t have him. They  _won’t_  have him, Kazuya’s smile tells him, and they hide out in a closet between classes just to say hello.  
  
Late at night, when the house is empty except for the two of them, Jin lies beside him and looks down at those bony shoulders and feels how soft and strong they are underneath his fingers, and that laugh runs through him when he says something Kazuya likes. It’s warm, that glow, his smile and his dark eyes that see Jin like no one else sees him, and it’s Jin’s favorite time of day. They don’t swig beer from the machine, and they don’t blush, they just grin and press close, talk in low voices under the sheets until it’s so late it’s almost morning, and then they fall asleep. They’re both late the next day.  
  
Jin turns eighteen, and it’s okay. It’s still not against the rules.  
  
Kazuya turns eighteen and it’s not.  
  
He’s Kame now, and his eyebrows are perfect, and his limbs are too sharp and stronger than ever and he doesn’t smile so much anymore. Jin doesn’t lie with him until all hours of the morning or meet him in the alcove or the subbasement, because that’s against the rules. Jin has girls now, a big slutty poster of one on his wall, and real ones who come back to his place and open for him, and it’s hot. They wear makeup and miniskirts and black lacey bras, and they make Jin come. They laugh and smile and he touches them everywhere, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t run through him, except when Kame looks away. And maybe Kame has girls too, maybe loads of them, and when he smiles at them maybe they feel that thing that used to be Jin’s but it isn’t anymore. Because it’s against the rules.  
  
Kame’s too close all the time. Too perfect, and it makes Jin’s skin crawl the way he looks in those jeans and he smiles at the screaming crowd. When he turns to Jin he’s still smiling but his eyes aren’t, and there’s nothing there at all, not even pretend. Not even Kazuya on the back of his eyelids. Jin leaves when he can’t stand it anymore. And he has dozens of girls, blondes with big breasts who call him “gin” and don’t hide their faces when they laugh. A hand is a hand and a mouth is a mouth, and there are soft cheekbones and eyeliner and sequins and English and nothing else. Jin comes as she sucks him and he can’t even smile anymore because he’s cold. Pathetic. Broken.  
  
He doesn’t know what he is anymore.  
  
Kame doesn’t smile for him when he comes back. Jin still isn’t there. The alcove is full and there’s a pair in the subbasement and Jin could have a thousand girls kneeling for him every night, but he doesn’t want that. He wants the thing he can’t have. He swigs beer and he checks out guys’ asses in the shower and he gets hard thinking of stuff that’s against the rules only now he doesn’t know why, because  _this_  is bad. This is alone, this is weak and cowardly and strange, this is broken. Jin and a girl and her wide eyes that aren’t Kame’s and her breasts and her mouth opening for him and he doesn’t  _want_  this. Jin is broken.  
  
Kame doesn’t smile for him when he shows up at his door. Jin kisses him and Kame pushes him away, swigs beer from the fridge and tells him to go, it’s against the rules, remember? Can’t have that anymore, Jin said. Jin kneels at his feet and hooks his fingers in Kame’s belt loops and begs, and it’s completely against the rules, it’s sad and pathetic and weak and  _gay_ , and he still doesn’t know what that is, but Jin doesn’t give a fuck anymore and it feels better already just being here. Weak at Kame’s feet rather than strong at someone else’s.  
  
He drops his forehead against Kame’s hip and he still doesn’t let go of his belt loops. After a few moments, Kame’s fingers fall lightly on his hair as Kame opens for him.  
  
They lie together in the dark and speak in soft whispers and warm sighs, and finally Jin understands.  
  
Gay is love.


End file.
